I had originally pre ordered the Sony PlayStation Wireless Stereo Headset 2.0 which provides 7.1 virtual surround sound, and also the Official Xbox One Stereo Headset, however, after a little research and cancelled them both. The cancelation was nothing to do with the products themselves, I just realised once the ‘new shiny’ hype had died down , I only occasionally needed to use headphone. This is normally when I’m getting in my gaming fix at unsociable times and attempting to stay in the good books with C and the neighbours.

So why the Tritton Universal Kunai Wireless Headset? Simple, they ticked all the boxes. I can have the audio input connected to my amp via the headphone jack meaning I don’t have to keep switching cables between devices. As they draw their power from the USB, I simply bought a cheap three pin USB mains power adapter and plugged them into that. They’re wireless so no trailing cables. With the Official Xbox One Stereo Headset Adapter coming out in a couple of weeks, this would make them compatible with all my games consoles.

So, how are they? They’re very good at what they’re designed for, which is gaming. I have tried these with music and a couple of movies, but felt the audio was a little too wide for them, and just didn’t sound right to me.

Onto the headphones themselves, they’re comfy, have a sleek drop down mic that extents to be closer to your mouth (didn’t realise it extended until I accidentally pulled on it). I did read a number of reviews before buying and a lot of people where complaining about a background hum on when you have the volume low. They’re correct, there is a hum, however the simple fix is to turn up the volume a little.

As for the microphone quality, I’ve only tested this so for with the Xbox 360, and it worked just as well as the one that comes with the 360.

I do have a few minor gripes, the headphones are battery powered and not rechargeable, however this was simply fixed by inserting two AA rechargeable batteries. The other, the volume control, it’s one of those switches that incrementally turns the volume up and down instead of having a wheel. Again, this isn’t too bad, but there’s no notification that you’re at the highest volume, I would have much preferred a simple wheel. Finally, I would have preferred an independent bass control, I find when there’s a lot of bass, like really deep bass, the headphones tend to distort a little. This has only happened a few times, and maybe I’ve got them set to loud.

All in all, a cracking set of headphones, they come with every lead you could ever need, and for the price they do the job well, unboxing photos below.

As I’ve spent the best part of the week playing on my new shiny Xbox One, I now have certain expectations for what a ‘next gen’ console should offer. There are obvious things like graphic and audio improvement over the previous generation, as well as an improved user experience. There is also the social side of things I’m interested in, as It’s only been a week, and I’ve already got sucked into the social side of the Xbox One and found myself in the habit of flicking through the smart glass app on a daily basis and catching up on my friends play history, and video uploads.

So the console itself, first thing to note, is that this console is noticeable smaller than the Xbox One (about the same size as the PS3 slim), also there is no external power block either, meaning that either the inside of the PS4 is like a TARDIS, or there has been some very clever engineering to get all that horsepower into such a slimline case. My only slight concern is, with everything being in the single box is, how will it deal with heat, and will it sound like a turbine like the PS3 does when it gets hot.

Next, the controller, quite simply, love it! I was never a fan of the Dualshock 1,2 or 3, however this is definitely is fourth time lucky. It feels like somebody from Sony snook into my house one night and took a mould of my hands, as it fit perfectly. We do have the interestingly addition this time of the touchpad, which I hope developers won’t force you in use in every game, but done right it could become very useful. They’ve also added a couple of cool features, the light bar on the back of the controller that allows the PS4 eye to track you, an internal speaker like you get in the WiiMotes and a headphone jack. As with the other Sony controllers, there is no external battery, so a simple USB cable to charge.

Finally for the hardware, the PS4 eye, again noticeably smaller that the Xbox Ones Kinect. Currently I have mine sat under the TV on top of the Kinect, and there is a good half inch either side. I haven’t used the camera extensively, but it seems to pick up voice commands pretty well, and recognises me enough to do the auto login, however I have to be a lot closer than the Kinect for it to recognise me. With picking up the PS4 eye, I also got to have a play with the PS4 ‘The Playroom’. This is nothing more than a tech demo, however it allows you to play with virtual robots and play a game of pong but gives a good demo of what the Dualshock 4 and the PS4 Eye are capable of.

So onto the user experience. As with the Xbox One, the setup was fast, and as expected there was a day one patch. Once downloaded and installed I got to play with the new UI. It’s different the the old XMB on the PS3, but also in a way very familiar. There’s a similar main bar, but then an additional sections at the top and bottom with essentially a snapshot of the the menu you were in last. The bottom seems to be your apps, games etc, but there is also a folder that says library, which seems to contain the same thing?

One of the features I’ve been most looking forward to was the remote play feature to the Vita. This kind of works with the PS3, but will won’t allow you to do much more than browse the XMB. This time around, it’s almost full access (Netflix didn’t seem to work when I tried it). To be honest I was a little dubious and expected a noticeable lag between the two, however, on my home network, with the PS4 connected via ethernet, there is practically no lag. I have seen YouTube videos of people being able to play remotely from outside of their home network, this will be something I’ll try in my lunch break on Monday and see how useable it is. One thing to point out here, if you are enabling Remote Play and putting your PS4 into standby, this will mean that the PS4 is broadcasting a wireless hotspot called PS4-xxxxxxxxxxx, which is a something I’m a little uncomfortable with as I might as well hang a note on my front door saying ‘PS4 in here! Come rob me!’

So the game, I upgraded to the Killzone package so that’s the only triple A title I have, but have to say the game looks amazing. The E3 videos I watched didn’t do this game justice at all, it’s a visual masterpiece, and to think this is a launch title, makes me very excited of what the future holds for the next gen games. The only other one I’ve had chance to play is Resogun, which was free on PS+…..what a great game, visually stunning, makes use of the microphone in the remote very well, and can see me putting hours into that to get up those leaderboards.

The final thing I want to mention is the media side of things. There is instant streaming to both Twitch and UStream (not tried it yet, but found it in the options) and Steam from Playstion, which if I understand correctly is Playstations own version of a streaming service as well. In addition to streaming services, it will allow you to share images and videos of you’re gameplay, however the providers are limited. Images can be sent to Twitter and Facebook, but videos can only be sent to Facebook!….which is annoying if say..you disabled your Facebook account years ago and vowed never to go back. My hope is, in the near future they’ll add YouTube, and allow you to upload to there.

All in all, a great piece of kit, and really looking forward to spending more time with both consoles over the coming months.